Fixing Blank, Empty or White WordPress Pages after Upgrade
Just a few hours ago, WordPress 2.8 was release to the general public (for the self-hosted version). I was notified within my admin portal and, after I did a quick database backup and downloaded all of my blog’s files, I clicked on the upgrade button. After a few seconds, WordPress told me that everything was successful. I was pretty amazed at how quickly the entire process took. Note: this is NOT unique to just WordPress 2.8 but also other releases of WordPress!
So, I went to my blog’s main page to ensure that everything was working, and this is what I saw:
That’s right, absolutely NOTHING. Some people have referred to this as the “WordPress White Screen of Death“ or the “Blank Screen of Death“ or just “WSOD“. I went to the login page and it too, was not working. Ouch!
But after a few minutes of quickly troubleshooting (since I had been through this before), I corrected the issue. Here are some troubleshooting and fixes you might want to try if you encounter this issue. I hope that you find a solution within this list. If you do, please leave a comment and let me and other readers know! There are three things that you can try: plugins, wp-config and wp-settings. (There may be others but these are ones that have been proven to be culprits.)
Plugins – usually, after an upgrade, a plugin is the culprit. One way to quickly check to see if one of your plugins is problematic is to do the following:
- Rename “plugins”folder TEMPORARILY to something else – I changed my plugins folder to “plugins_temp” and then tried the login page again and was able to see it, so, immediately I knew that I had an issue with one of my many plugins. Note that once you log into WordPress after renaming the plugin folder, WordPress will automatically disable ALL of your plugins as a safety precaution. The problem is, in order to do the next step, you need to remember which ones you had active. Be sure to change the name of your plugin folder back to its original name of “plugins”
- Enable all your plugins at once – Once you are back in to the plugins section of the WordPress admin, and all of your plugins have been automatically disabled because of the step above, you can try this option by “bulk enabling” all of your plugins. WordPress should enable anything that doesn’t crash it and will disable any plugins that produce “fatal errors.” If any of your plugins are automatically disabled, they could be your culprit.
- Enable plugins one at a time - Optionally, if you are having trouble with the “bulk enable” step above, you could try to enable each plugin one by one.
Once you identify the problematic plugin or plugins, see if they have been updated. If they have, delete the ones on your server and replace with the newer versions. Hopefully that will work. Otherwise, just leave the bad plugins de-activated until they are updated.
Empty Line in wp-config.php file – one thing that you should check is the wp-config.php file (obviously, make sure that it is in the WordPress directory, AND that it has the proper DB information). Scroll to the last part of your wp-config file and double check that there is no extra space after the closing “?>” tag. IF there is a trailing space before the actual end of the file, delete that space so that you are sure that your file truly ends with that tag.
Good:
// Get everything else
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');
?>
-END OF FILE-
Bad:
// Get everything else
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');
?>
-END OF FILE-
Tweak your wp-settings.php file – First, I don’t recommend really messing around with this file as it is pretty critical to the smooth operation of WordPress. However, I had noticed that when I migrated my blog over from a different hosting provider to a new one (in this case, BlueHost), that when I was activating some of my plugins, I was receiving the following error “Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted” and the plugin was not activating. The way that I corrected that issue was by editing the “WP_MEMORY_LIMIT” setting within the wp-settings.php file. The WordPress “out-of-the-box” settings for this is “32M”, which explains why the memory size was exhausted (by this point, I was pretty exhausted as well). Note, that this error may be different for different hosting providers and may manifest in other ways.
So what I did, and what fixed the blank screen issue for me in the past and with this latest WordPress upgrade, was to change the value of WP_MEMORY_LIMIT from 32M to 64M. After I did that, everything worked just great!
So, my fix took actually all of about 2 seconds, but several hours of research, testing and tweaking to get to that fix.
Note: I have received many requests for help each time a new version of WordPress comes out. I have helped a few people out but please realize that this does take time away from me writing reviews and other articles. However, I want to help, so I have come up with the following solution: I will ask for a $25 “up front fee” for me to review your FTP account and WordPress environment. After I receive that initial fee, if I can fix it, I will let you know and you can decide if you want me to proceed with the fix (for a small additional fee typically starting at an additional $25). Depending on the amount of work, the additional fee could be a bit more…but I’m not here to gouge you, just to get your WordPress blog back up and running. I will also keep you in the loop of what I am doing so that in the future, you can do it on your own. If you want my help, please fill out my Contact form and I will get back to you quickly. You will need to provide me with both your FTP login information and WordPress admin credentials (which you can change after I fix or review the issue). I have helped people recover from iFrame viruses to reinstalling WordPress, so far with complete success!
Anyway, those are 3 things that you can test: Plugins, wp-config and wp-settings. If you find a fix that is different, please be sure to let me know!
Did you find this solution useful? If so:
HTD Says: Be sure to follow Douglas Adams famous words of DON’T PANIC if you get the WordPress White Screen of Death. It is fixable!
Related Posts
- Blog updated to WordPress 2.1
- WordPress: People can view your Plugin Folder unless you fix!
- I wish a WordPress Developer would make the following plugin
- How to Move a WordPress Blog from One Domain/Host to Another
- Blog: TechDadBlog updated to WordPress 2.3 with some issues
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
I believe you can put it in your wp-config file so that it sticks
after an upgrade. Wp-settings will get overwritten. Glad it worked!
Another problem can be whitespace in your themes function.php file. Any whitespace before or after a <php> tag can render the dreaded blank screen. (Hunted this problem for a good hour… never close your documents lest you underestimate the power of 'undo')
These suggestions were very helpful. My issue was actually in the themes folder. Once I changed the name of the themes folder I was able to login to my account. Then I went back through my theme and found an extra line of code that had somehow been inserted. No more WSOD!
Thank You!
thanx a lot ! it helped me…..!!
I still have the issue but I'm upgrading to version 2.9.2 and I can't see my website neither the admin panel – This is the list of things I've try:
- I install fresh copies of WP 2.9.2.
- I check all the blank spaces after the “?>” on every single file and fix them.
- I rename the plugins folder and disable them all via PhpMyAdmin.
- I rename the themes folder to force WP to use the default.
- I upgrade the memory limit on the wp_settings.php file from 32 to 64.
Is there any other solution that I haven't try? Any other idea?.
Thanks in advance.
Hello Vivian,
Yes, these can be very tricky to figure out. I do offer a service (noted in the post) that I can take a look at your server/WordPress configuration for you and attempt to correct should you desire it. I have had 100% success with all of the people that I have helped. If you are interested, please fill out the contact form and include the following information: FTP information w/ user/pass login, WordPress admin user/password and the blog URL. I will follow up with you offline on this. If you want, simply send me some of the information in the contact form and I will follow up via email.
I sent you an e-mail via contact form.
Thank you so much for your help. At the beginning I was hesitating about giving you my information but you really help me in such an honest way. I am really happy with the results. You keep all my files saved and solved my problem really neatly. :-)
Thank you Michael.
Gracias por su commentario. Fue un placer ayudarle! Si necesita mas ayuda, usted sabe donde se puede encontrarme.
Thank you VERY, VERY MUCH for the tip. I just upgraded a plug-in and I did receive the white screen of death. And I always install the newest version of WordPress as soon as one becomes available.
I solved the problem by renaming the plugin folder, logging in, logging out, and renaming the folder back to plugin. That did the trick.
thank you very very much!! changing plugin folder name solved my problem.
Thanks to Michael, my blog, TheMommyInsider.com, is finally updated to the latest version of WordPress and I can add images and view Visual view again!
I've been looking around for over 6 months for someone to help me with my WordPress issues and Michael fixed them all. Michael was great to work with.. very fast and efficient.. and communicated often during the process which took less than a day.
Thanks Michael.
We had the WordPress WSOD. Asked hightechdad to take a look. With a very short turn around time he managed to fix it. It had to do with wp-cache which gets a bit freaked out when upgrades happen. He disabled the line in the wp-config.php file that starts the caching. Then I was able to log Thank you!
Thanks!!!
Just wanted to add to the chorus of comments…you totally saved me.
I had the white screen of death after a transfer and after much searching and head scratching, changing the settings.php to 64M did the trick.
Thanks a lot.
Just upgraded to 2.9.2 and got blank homepage and admin screens. Was searching around for solutions, getting the feeling I would have to do major surgery, then came upon your post. Renaming the Plugins folder enabled my sight to come back up. Thanks so much for saving me hours of trouble(shooting).
Tried everything I could think of, but I still can't fix the White Screen of Death on my website (http://www.pallab.net). Any ideas?
Yep, it looks like you got hit with the WSOD. If you want, I can help you fix it. I will send you a direct email.
Hi guys, my problem is a bit different.
I've changed host last week. Everything was OK. But now some posts are blank.
I've disable and enable all plugins and found where the bug was. However, I can't fix it.
There's a function of the plugin which calls a lot of SQL data. Only those pages this error looks.
I've changed memory already. Still broken. Any ideas?
The fix for something like that can be complicated. There may be paths that have changed between your old hosting environment and your new one. Some of those paths are stored within the MySQL DB and other thing may be coded automatically in a plugin. It does help sometimes to deactivate and delete the plugin in question and then reinstall and reactivate it again.
Let me know how it goes. I could potentially help but I would need access to your environment (DB & FTP)
Hi Michael, thanks for reply.
It's a strange thing. I've deleted the plugin two or three times that day yet. Nothing happened. So, I gave me a time to lunch (i was really stressed) and later everything was OK again. I did anything more. It just works. Well, three days and problem don't back. I think it's fixed.
btw, thanks again. Very useful blog.
Yes! thank you!! i was missing the ?> at the very end of my wp-config.php file. what was confusing was that that's exactly how i downloaded it from wordpress.org (version 2.9.2). but i saw this and added the ?> to the end of the file (with nothing after it, as you said) and it works!!
many many thanks
Michael, Thanks for this page and your helpful advice.
After using auto-upgrade (to 2.9.2) on a XAMPP setup (something I don't recommend) I found WSOD on home page and admin page. Tried all suggestions with no luck. So I manually upgraded:
1. copied all upgrade wp-admin files into my wp-admin folder
2. renamed all folders inside of my wp-content folder to *_TEMP
3. then copied the upgrade files for wp-content into my wp-content folder
4. copied all upgrade wp-includes files to my wp-includes folder
5. copied all files in the root of the upgrade wordpress folder to my root folder overwriting all files. Be sure to keep your wp-config.php file if you choose to delete first instead of overwriting.
6. checked to see if it worked…it did.
7. I then renamed the upgrade folders in wp-content to *_UPGRADE and rolled back my original folder names.
8. still works
Note:
This was my experience on my Windows XP machine using XAMPP. Your mileage may vary. I would suggest paying particular attention to setp 7 of the Upgrading WordPress Extended page, especially if you are not on the same type of environment:
7…DO NOT DELETE
wp-config.php file;
wp-content folder; Special Exception: the wp-content/cache and the wp-content/plugins/widgets folders should be deleted.
wp-images folder;
wp-includes/languages/ folder–if you are using a language file do not delete that folder;
.htaccess file–if you have added custom rules to your .htaccess, do not delete it;
robots.txt file–if your blog lives in the root of your site (ie. the blog is the site) and you have created such a file, do not delete it.
Thanks for the added info. That is definitely helpful!
I like to read tutorials on wordpress blogs
Michael fixed this up for me super quickly. In my case I was getting the dreaded WSOD because of a script injection attack, which I would have had a tough time even figuring out, let alone fixing! Thanks a lot Michael for working on it so quickly and taking the time to explain what you did to me so I can try to work out my other sites that may have also been affected by this. I really appreciate the help!
Thanks a lot michael, it my old plugin that make i can't login to my dashboard. Great tips…
Michael is great at tracking down WSOD (White Screen Of Death) issues. I contacted him on a Friday, after I had tried about a dozen different fixes myself, and he replied immediately. He was indefatigable, even re-installing my core WordPress files, and kept at it all weekend. By Sunday he had my problem isolated. Although I know he must have put in many hours on the problem (we exchanged about 20 emails!), his fee was minimal. I would definitely use him again and recommend him to others.
thanks you for this! editing my memory limit in wp-settings did the trick for me in my 3.0 ugrade
Michael hooked it up right away! After persistent problems with wordpress WSOD and bad code, we were up and running 100% healthy site in way under 24 hours!
great NFL jersesys at http://www.donejerseys.com
You have to use the new wp-config-sample.php file that comes with the update.
I had recently upgrade my japanese recipes blog to WP ver 3.0. Since then, I am facing the dealth of white screen. I restored back to the previous version 2.9.1 now. But still no luck. Tried all above tricks, it didn't solve my problem. Any help is appreaciate. To my suprise, most of my add-on domain also facing the same problem.
If you need help with the WSOD, please fill out my contact form with some details and I can definitely help you out!
Much appreciated – renaming the plugin folder got me back in. I was able to re-activate each plugin until I found the culprit.
DU YOU PEOPLE NOT READ….. USE THE NEW WP CONFIG FILE THAT COMES WITH THE UPGRADE. THAT IS ALL THAT IT IS…… Looks like wp-config-sample.php
Unfortunately just updating the wp-config file will not fix all of the cases. I have personally fixed people's wp installs that had nothing to do with the config file.
renaming plug-ins did the trick. Thank you HighTechDad.
thank you very much. today my wordpress font page and wp-admin got blank. after I try your advice to rename plugins folder to other name, I can access my wordpress again. Thank you very much.!!
ok i'll try it, and this is my blog http://www.dimasnurpanca.com , and my blog is error, and i'll try it! thanks dad :D
thanks alot for this great idea… it really solves my problem in my site
I got the blank screen after updating to wordpress 3.0.1 . The renaming myplugins folder and then going back to the admin panel brought it back up just fine. Then i just went back and renamed the plugins folder back to normal plugins and presto everything is back to normal…yes i had to update a couple plugins and activate them but that is simple simple. Thank you so much for posting this fix. My site is http://www.theinternetsaredown.com
Hi there ,
I had this problem with 3.0.1 and renaming the plugins folder helped indeed !
In addition to that I could easily troubleshoot that it was the outdated plugin:
WordPress Backup (by BTE)
which lead to the blank page.
Thanks for this post !
The plugin fix is spot-on. Thanks…